‘Will your god obey us?’ Balor asked.
‘If we want it to,’ Pagan said.
‘What do you mean "if"?’ Mudge asked.
‘That’s a lot of power to wield,’ Pagan said.
‘So who else do we trust to wield it?’ Mudge demanded.
‘It could be autonomous,’ Pagan said.
‘So we give what is effectively an alien information form autonomy as well as omnipotence in the net?’ Mudge asked.
‘I am against that,’ Balor said simply and forcefully.
‘So back to my original question: who do you trust?’ Pagan asked.
‘Me,’ Mudge said.
‘Brilliant. We’ll just hand total control of the net to an alcoholic junkie with no social skills,’ Pagan suggested.
‘I have social skills and you could do worse.’
‘I wanna see Mudge’s social skills,’ Morag interjected, grinning.
‘It’s not Christmas,’ I told her, also smiling. Some of the tension was beginning to bleed off.
‘Few people are worthy of my social skills,’ Mudge grumbled. ‘So who’s in control? You?’ he asked Pagan.
Pagan shook his head, flailing his dreadlocks around. ‘No, I don’t trust myself, and I wouldn’t trust the circle that made it. I wouldn’t even trust Morag,’ he said. I glanced over at Morag, who didn’t even look slightly offended.
‘Why not?’ Gibby asked. ‘You seem all right, a bit cracked but a nice enough guy,’ he drawled.
‘He helped make God; he probably helped come up with the idea in the first place. Clearly he’s a fucking megalomaniac with a god complex,’ Mudge said.
Pagan glanced at him irritably. ‘I’m not sure that I completely agree with Mudge’s diagnosis but that amount of power would certainly provide temptations that I don’t think I could control,’ he said.
‘Like taking over the security lenses in the changing room for the Austin Firecrackers’ cheerleaders,’ Buck said. He was obviously thinking out loud. We all took a moment to look at him. He raised an eyebrow and nodded sagely.
‘Yes, that would be the extent of my ambitions if I had that degree of power,’ Pagan said.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Balor.
Morag, Pagan and I all said no at once.
‘I’m serious. I have experience of command, and humanity needs a strong leader,’ he said. I think he was serious.
‘Balor, that is not going to happen,’ Pagan said.
Balor turned to fix him with his uncovered eye. Pagan didn’t flinch. ‘Only the strong should lead,’ Balor said. ‘Do you see anyone stronger?’ I couldn’t help glancing at Gregor, who was just watching the exchange, his head cocked at an odd angle.
‘No,’ Morag said.
Balor turned his fearsome head to look at her. ‘Why is that, little girl?’ he asked dangerously. I was really beginning to worry about Balor’s attitude towards all this.
‘I notice I’m just a whore or a little girl whenever the menfolk don’t want to listen to what I have to say, but isn’t the whole point of this to not have people like you in charge? Haven’t we had enough of warriors being in command?’
‘Arguably the problem is we haven’t had enough warriors in command,’ I said.
Morag looked confused.
‘Because if we had warr- soldiers in command then they would be less likely to send people off to die needlessly because they would know what it was like,’ Pagan explained. ‘Though historically it hasn’t always quite worked that way.’ He turned to Balor. ‘The problem is, you’re a good leader, but you would always negotiate from a position of strength and your opinions on people living and dying are a little… unorthodox.’ Though to give Balor credit, at least he wasn’t casual about it.
‘Yeah, but he has a point,’ Mudge said. ‘Humanity needs strong leadership. I mean who here doesn’t believe in an interventionist god?’ I put my hand up. Nobody else did but Buck and Gibby at least looked confused. I was surprised I was the only one.
‘Lot of believers in the room,’ I muttered.
‘Isn’t this where God went wrong?’ Mudge asked. ‘He told us we had to have faith but didn’t help us on the ground in the fight for survival where it would’ve mattered. We can do something about it: we can use the net to take over other systems like the orbitals, put us or God.in control and show people the way…’ he said, petering out towards the end. Presumably he must’ve known how he was sounding.
‘And the way is?’ Pagan asked.
‘Get rid of the Cabal, start delivering food and resources and medical care to the people who need it, stop tyranny, that kind of thing,’ he said, though I don’t think he was even convincing himself.
‘I don’t think you’ve thought this through,’ Pagan said.
‘Well, I wasn’t expecting to have to set the parameters for a new god when I got up this afternoon,’ Mudge snapped back.
‘Surely we would become the new tyrants?’ Gibby surprised me by pointing out.
Mudge considered this. ‘Maybe so, but I’d rather have a benevolent fascist than a greedy one in control. We can’t leave this down to people, we can’t just show them the way. That’s been tried by religions throughout history and people fucked it up and we ended up with the FHC.’
‘We’re only making God, not creating a new religion,’ Pagan said, smiling.
‘Really? Didn’t you want to be high priest? Isn’t that why you’re so jealous of the high priestess over there?’ Mudge asked. I saw Pagan’s face darken. Morag was glancing between the two of them.
‘Besides, if people fuck it up then isn’t that an argument for making it autonomous,’ Gregor said.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Mudge said.
‘Yes, I’d like to get out of this smelly cargo hull and get on with ruling the world, if that’s all right with you,’ Gregor replied sarcastically. If he was anything like the old Gregor then he must be pretty pissed off because he rarely used sarcasm.
‘It’s an argument for a strong leader,’ Balor said.
‘We should protect, not control,’ Rannu said, meeting Balor’s eye and holding it. After several moments of warrior bullshit Balor finally nodded. Mudge shook his head.
‘Whatever. That doesn’t change the fact that if you want something done you have to do it yourself. Not set some vague guidelines and hope that everyone interprets it right. I’m sorry, kids, but humanism and being nice isn’t going to save the day. You want to stop the war, then control the weapons and be prepared to use them because his lot,’ he said, nodding towards Gregor, ‘might not be so quick to down tools as we’ve been led to believe.’
‘Yeah, if we think like you then we’ll want to take control of you first,’ Gregor spat.
‘I’m not convinced that’s not what you’re trying to do at the moment,’ Mudge retorted.
‘We’ve told you that’s not what’s happening,’ Morag said.
‘As far as we know, you’ve been co-opted by one of them. You’ve said you’re on their side. How are we supposed to believe what you say?’ Mudge asked.
‘And me? Am I co-opted?’ Pagan asked.
Mudge considered this. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘you’re just a deluded old man.’ For just a second I saw the stricken look on Pagan’s face, then he was back to looking angry.
‘I’m sick of being controlled,’ I said.
‘Which is great, but what are the options?’ Mudge asked. ‘Obviously humans trying to sort it out themselves doesn’t work.’
‘How is that obvious?’ I asked. ‘It’s having people like the Cabal in control that doesn’t work – well for us and apparently the majority of people. They would probably consider themselves strong leaders. I know Rolleston would.’
‘So we have to be more benevolent than those arseholes, look out for everyone, not just ourselves,’ Mudge said.